Living But Lifeless
by Valkyrie0Magma
Summary: She thought he was gone...but she was wrong. Dead wrong. Big mistake, Sakura. Character death. NOT Sasori/Sakura. Rated M for violence/to be safe.


_And she watched the world through lifeless eyes, and saw without truly seeing._

She should've known. The moment his body had fallen to the ground in front of her and Lady Chiyo, she should have known that Sasori no Akasuna was not gone forever.

But she hadn't.

She'd been stupid.

And look where it had gotten her.

How had he come back to life? He'd been confirmed dead, a broken puppet with the knives in his chest. Oh, but that hadn't been the end. Far from it.

It had begun slowly, with Sakura waking up gasping and screaming from nightmares, broken out in a cold sweat as images flashed before her mind. Sasori's cold smile and laugh as he threatened her, his poisoned blade being driven into her stomach.

Pulling it deeper into her to keep her bleeding slowed…

Sakura had seen him, but could tell no one. She'd be just walking through the streets of Konoha, and do a double take because she could've sworn she heard a clatter of wood, an emotionless voice, or seen a flash of red hair with cold brown eyes.

At first, she'd dismissed it as her body recovering from the shock of her fight with the demented puppeteer. She'd thought it would end after a month or two. Maybe even just a few weeks…

She was wrong.

_Dead_wrong.

_And she was caught in a nightmare that comes while she wakes._

The "hallucinations" continued, becoming more frequent as the months passed. She begged for missions, pleading with the Hokage to be sent out of the village more and more often.

Her friends began to fear for her sanity. But how could she tell them?

Ghosts didn't exist, and the dead never came back.

But the missions never helped. He seemed to be following her, everywhere. To Suna, his old village, when she had to help cure a group of injured shinobi who had been nearly killed after fighting some of Orochimaru's subordinates.

To Kusa when she helped cure a minor epidemic.

Everywhere. She was never escaped from the dead puppeteer. Her friends weren't the only ones who feared for their pink-haired girl's sanity.

The hallucinations grew worse, and they grew stronger. No longer just a glimpse here and there. She'd see him standing there, watching her with his dark and emotionless eyes. She'd see him walk away, find him standing behind her in her reflection in the mirror only for him to vanish when she turned.

At night, she'd hear his cold voice, words that she'd never heard spoken from between his wooden lips during the fight.

_"I'm going to come after you, brat. And I'm going to rebuild my collection starting with you."_

"I don't forgive, and I certainly don't forget. You're a dead girl."

"You'll make a very interesting puppet."

Sakura could hardly sleep anymore, for fear of that man. That man who had made it very clear that he hated her…

But how could the dead hate? The dead didn't even feel.

_And she thought she was safe, that it was all just a dream._

Finally, the allegedly "dead" puppeteer made his move. One that would destroy her, completely. In the most permanent way possible.

A way that went beyond even death.

He refused to let her rest even then, oh no. Only the worst tortures awaited the pink-haired Haruno girl.

It happened fast, and she didn't even believe when it _did_happen. She'd fallen asleep to the cold threats hanging in the air, as she always did.

But halfway through her nightmares, she'd opened her eyes.

Green met brown as she recognized the puppet standing over her, smirking coldly.

"Oh, Kami…"

"No, not Kami, but far from it. In fact, the complete opposite, you could say."

She tried. She really did. She screamed desperately, thrashing and lashing out with everything she had against the puppetmaster. But something she hadn't expected happened. She thought it was just another dream. You couldn't hurt people in dreams. But her kunai made contact, in a way. It slashed across his shoulder and blood dripped from the wound.

The knife fell from her hand as she stared in shock at the gash.

"You're…human…"

"Of course I am, you little witch." He snarled, and lunged forward, slamming her to the wall. She felt something cold and metallic as the poison slipped into her system.

"And you'll be paying for causing my death."

Sleep and death would have been much better compared to what he had in store.

When Sakura's eyes opened, it took her a moment to figure out where she was. It was all blurry as she refocused her senses. She realized that she hurt. Her throat and collar-area mostly.

She tasted blood in her mouth. Her own blood. And felt like…something was missing.

She couldn't move either. She was paralyzed from even more poison.

Sakura opened her mouth to cry out for help, but found it impossible.

"You can't make a sound now, girl. I removed your voice box. I find silent suffering so much less irritating than screams."

She stared at the puppetmaster in horror as he walked towards her, holding a glittering scalpel. There were other tools here, too. Tools used to make…oh god. This must be where he made his puppets. Her face paled, and he laughed.

"You're terrified? Good. I want to see you cry. No, I'm not going to rape you, why would I do that? I have…someone much more preferable for that. The one your teammates tore apart, both with my death and by removing his arms."

Sakura felt shocked and surprised. She had never really paid attention to other people's sexuality, but she hadn't expected THIS…particularly not at a time that it didn't matter.

"That's right, show as much shock as you want. I don't care. You almost did us both a favor with my death."

He licked his lips. "I can actually feel him now."

How had he been brought back anyway?

"I know what you're wondering, and the answer is simple. I'm a more valuable member to the Akatsuki than you think. Deidara's pleading only helped the situation. A few weeks later, the Leader revived me."

"I've been watching you, girl, and you know it. I wanted to make sure you were shaken and scared."

"I wanted to make you fall apart."

He began walking towards her, and held up the scalpel.

"Oh, but ruining your mind isn't all I have in mind. No, it really isn't. I want to add you to my collection, and I intend to…with a twist."

"You will be my puppet, preserved eternally. But you will also be able to think, to see, to hear…without speaking or the ability to do anything about it. You will be dead, but alive. And I will make sure of this by adding you to my collection…without killing you first."

He'd basically be dissecting her.

_And she screamed without ever making a sound._

He began to cut her open, calmly and methodically. First, he placed a thin horizontal slice between her shoulders, at her collarbone where she was already sore from him removing her voice box while she was unconscious.

Then he made another cut that was just slightly above her hips, perhaps an inch above them, and measured parallel to the one by her shoulders.

The third and final slice connected the two cuts in the middle. And it hurt so much, how he took his time. The cut was deep enough to hurt, but not enough to kill her. Yet. She knew he enjoyed torturing her, the sadist. His smile that bordered on insanity proved it.

Sakura noticed that she hardly bled, and it puzzled her. Perhaps it was the poison, so that she wouldn't bleed to death before he had changed her into…what? Not a puppet, not human…not even what he had been before his first death.

The true agony began. He sank his fingers into the center of the cuts he had made…and tore her open. Literally just pulled back the flaps of skin like they were pages of a book.

Her mouth opened in a silent scream of agony, tears beginning to drip down the side of her face. She had never experienced agony like this, as what was meant to be internal was now fully revealed to the world. Every organ in her body.

Sasori studied her with a curious, yet bored, interest. This was new. Most of the people he turned to his puppets were dead, and their organs were as well.

But now…

He could see every shaky, painful breath her longs drew in. He could watch her heart beat rapidly behind her rib-cage. He could see every organ, pink and healthy and _alive.  
><em>

The same would not be said for Sakura by the time he was finished.

Sakura felt only more and more ill as he began to casually cut every organ out of her. He started with the useless ones, the ones not necessary to life. Her appendix was first. She nearly threw up as she saw it in his hands, but didn't.

Probably because of every single internal organ being revealed to the outer world. Sasori smirked, his eyes flickering to one in particular.

"Hmmm…what happens if I do…this."

It was just a slight cut across the skin of the organ known as her stomach. But it was still enough that some of the acid began to trickle out, burning her innards and making the pain even worse. Another silent scream that would never be heard.

_And she was trapped in a torture she could never describe._

Finally…every last organ had been removed. Well, almost every one of them. The ones necessary to keep her functioning for a while longer remained.

Her heart, lungs, and brain. Sasori studied her coolly as she looked at him dully. She was in too much pain to cry anymore, but for some reason, she could not faint.

"I'll let you be unconscious for this part, witch. Because this will be the last you ever are truly alive."

_And she welcomed the darkness to take her away._

Sakura didn't truly wake up. But she wasn't asleep anymore.

She felt nothing.

She wasn't alive, but she wasn't dead.

Everything around her was dark, for a simple reason. She was sealed within one of Sasori's scrolls, caught within an endless void that she could never leave without his summoning.

She was a puppet, but with a difference. She could see and she could think. She felt the emotions he believed would make her suffer, and nothing more.

Fear, pain, sadness, betrayal…and the agony that would come from being forced to kill the people of Konoha, everyone she cared about. And she was still in pain. She always would be, for he had removed every organ…except for one.

She had her brain, but did it matter at all?

She couldn't use it for anything. She was a wooden limbed slave who couldn't even control her own body.

She was nothing.

Konoha was in an uproar. Their Hokage's own student had gone missing. Naruto and Rock Lee were hysterical with worry. Ino was terrified something horrible had happened. Tsunade and Kakashi were both trying to control themselves.

All that control left when they searched her apartment and found drops of blood on the floor. They knew what had happened.

Haruno Sakura was gone.

Her funeral was plain, as what is a funeral with no body, no ashes? Only drops of blood and a memory…

That was all that remained of the once smiling girl, because she'd killed a man who just wouldn't stay dead.

_And she was now just a puppet for him to manipulate at will._

Days turned to weeks. Then months. And she was his favorite as he rebuilt his collection.

She still had her chakra-enhanced strength, making her a difficult puppet to break. He seemed to particularly enjoy using her to fight against Konoha ninjas and Suna ninjas, for obvious reasons.

When Team Kakashi found out, Naruto nearly went berserk.

All that Sakura wanted, in her empty, painful existence…was to break. She wanted to just be a broken puppet. She wanted to fall apart.

Sometimes he'd just leave her out in the open of his room at let her watch the world around her with the knowing it would torment her. Particularly when he would pull that blonde boy, Deidara, into his room and pin him to the bed…

Watching those, she would have felt embarrassed if she were human. But she wasn't. Not anymore.

Finally, Pain launched the attack on Konoha. And Sasori held her at the front of the line. A puppet that nobody wanted to destroy.

She found herself killing. People she cared for…

There went Sai, his skull crushed by her fist.

Ino fell, coughing up blood…

Lee, refusing to fight the girl he adored…

And she could do nothing. Sasori had truly gotten his revenge on the poor, pink-haired girl.

And she would suffer eternally…

**And she watched the world through lifeless eyes, and saw without truly seeing.**

**Not my best one-shot, but hey, can you blame me for this? I was BORED.**

**THIS IS NOT SASORIxSAKURA. IN NO WAY. It is Sasori killing Sakura with some implied SasoDei.**

**Not sure if this is really mature content, but just to be safe...**

**Totally random idea that popped into my head. Eh, I like it anyway...funny, I don't even hate Sakura that much. XD Oh well.**

**The italicized lines are ones I thought sounded poetic.**


End file.
